Thomas Littleton wrote:
Sandy,
I don't know what species you were fishing over, but I have seen browns do
the same thing here in the east. Like you, the size of the fly used didn't
matter, you had one shot each with a cricket or a midge.
Sadly, I have no answer, either, but am glad to see that kind of frustration
is widespreadg!

Hi Tom:

I wrote that post in a hurry last week, just before going on
vacation. I could have written it more carefully. I should have
called that post "do they remember individual flies?"

Remember is a loaded word--a word that suggests thinking.
I work in a neuroscience lab where they (I'm a programmer there,
not a neuroscientist) study cricket responses to wind puffs. They (the
crickets) go nuts if any incoming wind puff pulses at 30hz....which is
approximately the speed of a wasp wing beat. Crickets also measure the
directional source of any incoming wind puff (on a 360 degree horizontal
grid) and semi-instantly jump 180 degrees away from the wind--which
is, of course, the best escape strategy.
But that isn't thinking. It's hard-wired response.


I have a hunch fish respond similarly....responding to external
stimuli with hard-wired responses, rather than thinking.
But those hard-wired responses do, it seems, include some sort of short
term cache memory, where they learn not to bite a fake grasshopper more
than once, but still ready to bite a phony black caddis...or whatever
else. I know from experience too, that the same fish will bite that
hopper the next day. That sort term Momento-like memory doesn't last
the night. (they were high altitude cutthroats, by the way).




--
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